


Home is a look on a face

by lloydsglasses



Series: Series 10 Fics and Drabbles [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cross-Generational Friendship, Episode: s10e01 The Pilot, Episode: s10e04 Knock Knock, Episode: s10e08 The Lie of the Land, Episode: s10e09 Empress of Mars, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Missing Scene, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 11:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11289876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lloydsglasses/pseuds/lloydsglasses
Summary: Bill gazes at the sight before her: her tutor, with his sunglasses and his electric guitar, suddenly gone all power stance and pouty bottom lip even as he plays aclassical symphony. She tries to stop herself – really, she does – but as the noise from his guitar steadily fades away, the office is filled with the sound of Bill’s fond laughter.





	Home is a look on a face

In Bill’s first tutorial the Doctor talks excitedly at her for around forty minutes – at breakneck speed and about anything and everything that seems to pop into his head – and then tells her to write a two thousand word philosophy essay entitled ‘could you outlive all of your memories?’

She stares at the words she’s carefully copied down into her notebook, the Doctor’s voice still buzzing away in the background, and can’t help but wonder if this was really such a good idea. Natural curiosity’s all well and good but it’s been years since she last wrote an essay of any kind, and this one sounds… deep. Like, really deep. Bill isn’t sure she even knows where to start. And she’s really, really aware that she needs to get a good mark, or the Doctor will stop tutoring her.

 _Maybe that’s a good thing,_ says a traitorous voice in the back of her head. It sounds suspiciously like Moira. _You’re not even supposed to be here anyway, you just serve chips in the canteen. It’s a complete accident that you ended up in his lectures at all and–_

“Bill?”

She looks up. The Doctor is peering at her curiously. Bill attempts to summon up a smile, hoping she doesn’t look as intimidated as she feels. There’s a moment of silence while the two of them stare at each other, before the Doctor looks down and starts to rearrange a few of the papers on his desk.

“We can treat this one as a trial run,” he says, with a nod to the essay title scrawled across her notebook. “To get a sense of where you are. It won’t count towards a final grade.”

“Okay,” says Bill, partly relieved and partly embarrassed that he seems to think she needs coddling.

The Doctor coughs. “And you can ask me for help, if you need to. I’m always happy to help.”

“Okay,” Bill repeats, fingers clenching around her pen. She can’t tell if she feels more frustrated at him or at herself.

“Is this the end of the lesson, then?” she asks tightly, once the silence has drawn out a bit longer. He nods slowly, and Bill starts to pack away her things as fast as she can without making it seem like she’s trying to rush. As she stands to leave, the Doctor clears his throat.

“Bill, are you alright with all of this?”

“Yeah,” she says, dragging the word out as if she’s surprised he’s asking. “I’m fine.”

The Doctor fixes her with a penetrating look. “I don’t think that’s true.”

Bill stops, staring at him. She isn’t sure what to say.

“It will be, though,” he continues, before she even gets the chance. “With time. I’m certain of it.”

He smiles then. Not the sharp, manic smile that shows off all his teeth, but something gentler. Something kind and warm and reassuring. 

Somehow, it’s enough to make Bill smile in return.

\--

Her second tutorial is a bit less overwhelming. Rather than talking at her, the Doctor asks Bill to tell him three things that she’s always wanted to understand and from there it flows more like a conversation.

Life becomes busier after that, what with tutorials and essays on top of working in the canteen, along with her attempts to maintain some form of a social life. Somehow though, Bill manages it all; for the first time in her life it’s like she’s succeeding at all the things she wants to achieve. The Doctor returns that first essay to her with a wide smile and a large 72% circled at the top in red pen, and from then on her marks just keep going up.

Her tutor becomes less of an enigma to her as the term goes on. At times he can still be a bit aloof, but mostly he’s just full of enthusiasm and is by far the best teacher Bill’s ever had. He asks for her opinions about literature and philosophy and history and considers each of her answers carefully, as if he actually values what she thinks, before countering her arguments with something that pushes her to think even harder, or challenges her to approach things from a new direction. Bill thinks her favourite thing about him is that he always encourages her to ask questions and when he can – which is most of the time – he answers them too, rather than stating _it’s not on the exam, so you don’t need to know,_ like some of her previous teachers had.

And on top of it all, he actually seems to believe in her. Bill isn’t really sure what to do with that initially, but in time it helps her learn to believe in herself.

At Christmas she buys him a rug, and then the two of them share a comfortable silence over a plate of biscuits.

“Thanks for the biscuits,” says Bill when it’s time for her to leave.

“Don’t mention it,” he replies with a shrug.

As she reaches the door, Bill pauses and looks back at him. Despite her best intentions, a cheap rug and a quick thanks probably haven’t conveyed what she actually wanted to say to him.

“Thanks for everything else too,” she says as honestly as she can, looking him straight in the eye. “You’re an awesome tutor.”

The Doctor blinks a bit and sort of half opens his mouth as if he doesn’t quite know how to respond to that, so Bill just smiles and leaves before things can get too awkward.

\--

“Happy new term,” Bill says brightly, stepping into his office.

As the Doctor vanishes into a side-room with a muffled _with you in a moment,_ Bill catches sight of the rug she got him – it’s somehow _underneath_ his box. Her confusion doesn’t last long though, because the Doctor emerges from his room and Bill is distracted by his manic, excited grin and the sunglasses that seem to be resting on his nose. She opens her mouth to ask what’s going on, and then she notices that he’s also carrying a pair of guitars. 

“Music!” he exclaims, thrusting one of the guitars at her.

Bill looks down at the guitar in her hands and then back up at the Doctor, smiling curiously. “Are you gonna teach me how to play?”

He nods enthusiastically. “Beethoven’s Fifth!”

The first four notes of the recognisable symphony ring out from his guitar, and Bill gazes at the sight before her: her tutor, with his sunglasses and his electric guitar, suddenly gone all power stance and pouty bottom lip even as he plays a _classical symphony._ She tries to stop herself – really, she does – but as the noise from his guitar steadily fades away, the office is filled with the sound of Bill’s fond laughter.

He doesn’t teach her all that much guitar in the end – just a few chords while he talks about different eras of music and the composition of Beethoven’s symphonies. For the most part they just end up sitting on the floor of his office, the Doctor cross-legged while Bill leans back against his desk and listens to him strum out melodies she’s never heard before. After a while the Doctor changes his style to recognisable pop songs; Bill sings along to all the ones she knows and before long she’s joined by the Doctor’s odd assistant (Nardole, is it?), who walks in while they’re in the middle of Lola by the Kinks and sort of doesn’t leave. The Doctor doesn’t sing, but he does take off his sunglasses and smiles warmly at Bill every time she catches his eye.

She stays for an hour longer than she normally would and spends the rest of the evening wondering if there’s a clear-cut boundary between teacher and friend.

\--

Things get a bit weird after that. Good weird though, in a my-tutor-is-an-alien kind of way. Bill encounters sentient puddles and emoji robots and a giant fish in the Thames, and the next day she turns up to her tutorial as just like normal.

“So is this what we do now, then?” she asks, looking over at the Doctor from her usual seat. They haven’t really done any work yet – to be honest they’re just sitting together and drinking tea. “Am I going to turn up to tutorials and end up going on field trips though time and space?”

The Doctor tilts his head. “Do you want that to be what we do?”

“Uh, yeah! Definitely!”

He takes another sip of his tea, and while he appears calm and collected Bill thinks he might be using the motion to conceal a pleased smile. “What’s your favourite planet?”

“Probably Saturn,” says Bill, having never really thought about it before. She’s a little surprised at the change in subject. “Why?”

The Doctor says nothing, just flicks his eyes towards the TARDIS and then back at Bill. She catches on easily enough, and doesn’t bother to hide her excited smile behind her teacup.

\--

Nardole introduces himself properly once it’s established that the whole time-space travelling thing isn’t likely to stop.

“The Doctor said he’ll be helping you move house this weekend,” he states, after an unexpectedly brusque handshake.

“Yeah,” says Bill awkwardly. “I don’t have a car or anything, so he offered to help.”

“That was nice of him,” Nardole mutters.

Bill scrutinises him carefully. “Look, do you have a problem with me?”

He stares at her for a moment, mouth agape. “No, why would I have a problem with you?”

“Uh, well I don’t know if you noticed but you’ve been pretty rude to me recently. Last week you called me a human as if it was some kind of disease.”

“Oh,” says Nardole and he swallows, looking a bit guilty. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude.”

“Okay,” Bill says, raising an eyebrow and prompting him to carry on.

“It’s just that…” he breaks off and sighs heavily. “The Doctor has a job to do. A very important one. But sometimes he can be easily distracted.”

Bill snorts. “Yeah, you’re telling me.”

Nardole smiles a little at that, although when he continues his voice is serious. “I just don’t think he should be off in space or wherever it is you two have been going when he has responsibilities back here.”

Bill nods, processing that. Nardole opens his mouth to speak again, and this time his tone has shifted into something entirely warm and earnest. “I don’t have a problem with you though. You seem lovely.”

“Thanks,” Bill says slowly, laughing a little in surprise.

He gives her a smile in return. “I mean it. Having you around is nice. It’s been a long time since he made a new friend.”

It’s at this point that Nardole solidifies himself in Bill’s head as _mother-hen_ rather than _Doctor’s valet._ She doesn’t notice the change until later of course – in the moment she’s far too busy trying to quantify the warmth that spread through her at the thought of being the Doctor’s friend rather than just his student.

\--

“You never told me the Doctor was your grandad,” says Shireen, sitting cross-legged in the middle of Bill’s new bed, while Bill herself hangs clothes in the wardrobe. Cringing a little – she’d been really hoping she might have got away with it – Bill shrugs as casually as she can.

“It never really came up,” she replies. Shireen gives her a confused stare, and Bill belatedly remembers all the conversations the two of them have had about the Doctor’s lectures. Yeah, possibly Bill should have thought harder about this before she opened her mouth.

“So, wait,” continues Shireen, still frowning. “Why d’you always call him ‘the Doctor’ like everyone else instead of ‘grandad?’”

 _Oh shit._ “I, uh, just didn’t want to make things weird, you know.”

_Well done, Bill. Things are definitely not going to be weird now they all think he’s your grandad._

“Oh, God,” Shireen exclaims suddenly, and Bill looks up at her. “Didn’t I once spend like half an hour complaining to you about how he’s a right nutter? That day when I showed up to his office hours and he started telling me about how he’d been a Vestal Virgin in Ancient Rome. Oh God, you must hate me!”

She looks so panicked that Bill has to laugh.

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” she says with a grin, moving to sit against the headboard now that her clothes are all unpacked. “I think I’d find it pretty weird too if he started describing what it was like to be a Vestal Virgin.”

Shireen smiles, shifting to lie on her front. “He seems sweet though. Helping you move in and everything, and then being so reluctant to leave.”

Well, that’s one way of describing it, Bill thinks. _Overly suspicious_ is another.

“I wish my grandad were a bit more like that,” Shireen continues. “When he was helping me move into uni in first year, he turned up three hours late and then decided it would be a good idea to drive through the centre of Bristol, even though I’d been telling him for ages that there was a marathon that day and half the roads were closed!”

Bill laughs. “Yeah, fortunately the Doctor tends to be a bit more reliable than that.” 

Shireen smiles. “That’s really nice.”

“Yeah,” says Bill, realising with faint surprise that actually, it _really is_ nice. Because while she definitely can’t rely on him to be predictable, or even to act in ways that she necessarily understands, Bill thinks she probably can rely on him to be there for her if she ever needs him. It’s a distinctly odd thing to realise – Bill doesn’t think there’s ever been an adult figure in her life that she’s been able to rely on, before now.

 _Space-grandad,_ Bill thinks idly. She hadn’t really meant anything by the term at first– she just desperately wanted to avert a crisis with her new housemates – but now that Bill thinks about it, a weird-but-kindly space grandad might not be the worst thing in the universe.

\--

After that, things go on as normal for a while – or at least, as close to normal as you can get when your tutor is an alien with a penchant for dangerous situations. Bill still has tutorials with the Doctor every weekday, it’s just that sometimes those tutorials happen to take place on Titan or in seventeenth century Edinburgh. The only blip is a particularly terrifying trip where Bill is nearly killed by the vacuum of space, but other than that she thinks life is going pretty great.

Until one night a pyramid appears in the middle of a war zone, and then suddenly it isn’t.

\--

Six months after she gives up the Earth in order to save the Doctor’s life, Bill wakes to the sound of low murmuring and the calming sensation of someone’s hand stroking gently through her hair.

“Doctor, I think she’s waking up!”

The hand stills, coming to rest lightly over her forehead. Bill opens her eyes and sees the Doctor’s face peering down at her, Nardole hovering anxiously at his side.

“Bill,” the Doctor exclaims, lips pulling up into a wide smile. “How are you feeling?”

Bill blinks, struggling to figure out how she ended up on the floor with the two of them kneeling above her like this. “Fine, I think. What happened?”

She tilts her head to the side to get a better look around her, and that soothing hand brushes softly over her hair again. It’s the Doctor’s hand, she registers distantly, as she takes in her surroundings. There’s a Monk lying motionless in the middle of the room, and the walls are covered by large television screens – _blank_ television screens. That’s when she remembers.

Bill whips her head back towards the Doctor. “Did it work?” she asks urgently “Did I stop the Monks?”

If anything, his smile becomes even wider. The hand in her hair moves away, and Bill almost protests but then he’s using it to help her into a sitting position. “Yes, Bill. I believe you did.”

A giddy sort of relief slams into her, but before Bill has time to respond the Doctor moves forward on his knees and pulls her into an unexpected hug. Her arms flail a little in surprise, but the Doctor simply leans in closer to whisper quietly in her ear. “Don’t ever do it again.”

Bill blinks as his words sink in, before eventually letting out a short burst of quiet laughter. Belatedly, she wraps her own arms around the Doctor’s lanky frame and holds on tight, smiling against his shoulder when Nardole latches onto her other side and starts burbling happily about group cuddles.

\--

When the Monks are gone, Bill makes the Doctor take her on a trip to somewhere without any imminent danger or death.

“Something really different to Earth,” she insists. “With weird geology and no creepy monsters who want to take over the world.”

They end up on a planet called Hox, which is entirely covered by a thick layer of blue ice that glints and sparkles even in the pale sunlight. The Doctor hands her a sort of thermal suit and a torch, and then leads her through a winding collection of ice caves – the deepest of which contain pools filled with bizarre looking purple water – until they finally emerge into what seems to pass for a Hoxian city. The buildings are sculpted straight from the ice, with decorative swirls and stars clinging to the tops, and have somehow been painted a whole multitude of different colours. It’s loud and busy, and for a long time Bill just stands there and soaks it all in, more at peace than she’s felt in ages.

Afterwards, the Doctor leads her to a large library in the TARDIS and hands her a book of Hoxian folklore. Bill reads aloud the story of an ancient queen with unusual magical powers, who was forced to flee her home out of fear of persecution at the hands of her own people. She settled on Hox, and in her grief at losing her kingdom she turned the planet icy and cold.

“Sounds a bit like Frozen,” Bill remarks.

The Doctor frowns. “Yes. The entire planet’s frozen, you must have noticed that.”

Bill resists the urge to face-palm. “No, I mean the film Frozen.”

“Oh,” the Doctor says, and seems to lose interest.

“You’ve never even heard of it, have you?”

“No.” Bill stares at him, wondering how he could have missed the year of Frozen-mania considering he would have been confined to Earth at the time. He shifts defensively. “Why would I have?”

“Because you once had me write an essay on the importance of fiction to human society and then spent an entire tutorial quoting Shakespeare at me. You love human culture.”

The Doctor busies himself with some of the books on the shelf next to him, which is a sure sign that he doesn’t want to admit she’s right. _Right then,_ Bill thinks.

“Okay, I’ve decided: we’re doing a TARDIS film night. There must be some sort of space projector type thing in here that plays movies.”

“Oooh, a film night,” comments Nardole from where he’s suddenly appeared at the door, bearing a tray laden with hot chocolate. “What are we watching?”

“Frozen,” says Bill, before the Doctor can protest.

Nardole sort of squeals with delight. “I’ll get us some popcorn!”

Later, squashed between Bill and Nardole on a sofa in some sort of TV room that the Doctor claimed not to know existed, they get him to admit that Frozen wasn’t so bad. Given that he hadn’t wandered off once during the film and had even stopped fidgeting after about fifteen minutes, Bill thinks he probably enjoyed it a lot more than he’s letting on.

“Can we do Legally Blonde next?” asks Nardole, enthusiastically.

Bill looks over at the Doctor and takes note of the blank expression on his face. “You’ve never heard of that either, have you?”

He sighs. “Maybe we should start a list.”

\--

He does start a list in the end, and TARDIS film nights are suddenly a regular thing in Bill’s life. She ends up showing him a ton of classic sci-fi films; Close Encounters (which he enjoys), Alien (which he dislikes on principle), Metropolis (which he seems to find amusing and enthralling in equal measure) and whatever else she can think of. After a few weeks she discovers that he becomes dangerously invested in chick flicks (provided there’s not too much romance) and enjoys family movies more than any other genre (Wall-E is a particular success). Nardole, on the other hand, seems to enjoy anything and everything, although he falls asleep during most of it.

They’re watching Face Off tonight, because Bill figures that at some point during the Doctor’s continuing education in ‘Early Earth Cinema’ – his term, not hers – he’s likely to encounter Nicolas Cage, so there’s no point shying away from it.

“This film makes no sense,” the Doctor complains, and Bill nudges him lightly with her elbow.

“That’s kind of what makes it fun.” She smiles winningly when he shoots her a look of intense scepticism. With a put-upon sigh he turns back to the screen, and Bill has to stifle a grin at the sight of him. They’re only about fifteen minutes in but Nardole has already fallen asleep on the Doctor’s shoulder. After the customary period of awkward fidgeting he seems to have finally relaxed into it, stealing handfuls of popcorn from the open packet lying limply in Nardole’s palm.

Back on screen, Nic Cage is doing the wide-eyes-hysterical-laughter-over-the-top thing and the Doctor looks so aghast at the performance that Bill can’t hold in her giggles.

“So this guy on screen? He’s won an Oscar,” she states, waiting for his reaction. She’s not disappointed: he turns to look at her with an expression of unmitigated horror which steadily makes way for a grim sort of sadness.

“I weep for the human race,” he says mournfully.

Bill laughs properly this time, and it must be contagious because suddenly the Doctor is laughing with her, Nardole grumbling in his sleep and sinking a little lower down the Doctor’s side. She watches the two of them fondly once her laughter has petered out and the Doctor simply grins at her, filching another handful of popcorn and offering her part of it. Suddenly and quite inexplicably, Bill’s struck with the most intense kind of belonging she’s ever experienced.

Before she can really think about it she swings her legs up onto the sofa and lies her head on the Doctor’s free shoulder. She feels him stiffen a little and keeps her eyes fixed determinedly on the screen. After a few moments, he wriggles his arm out from beneath her and wraps it lightly around her shoulders.

He keeps it there for the entire film and, despite the best efforts of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, Bill is eventually lulled to sleep by his pleasant warmth, Nardole’s quiet snoring and the inescapable feeling of _home._

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it’s been a while since I’ve had the time to post anything new, so I figured I may as well go ahead and combine the ideas I’ve had over the past few weeks into one slightly longer fic.
> 
> As ever, come say hello on [tumblr!](http://lloydsglasses.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
